Michael Ring supports service animal education campaign

Thank you.

Hi, my name is Michael Ring.

If anyone needs a verbal description of my appearance, I'm a 63-year-old white guy who needs a shave.

And I'm wearing a green hat that says Disabled in Action.

I happen to be the vice president.

I'm wearing a hoodie that says I ran a marathon because I'm complicated.

I wanted to talk about the proposals to give more information about service animals.

And a little background about myself.

I've never been a fan of pets.

My kids hate me.

You can all pile on, but it's just not a thing for me.

But I acquired a disability 12 and a half years ago.

And since then, I hang around with a lot of people with various disabilities.

I have volunteered in hospitals, and I've seen service animals are life-extending, life-saving, life-changing things.

People could...

They are as important as wheelchairs and ramps and elevators.

They're not pets.

Pets are luxuries, and people need service animals to get out of their house, to go to work, to live their lives, to be alive, not just to live.

There's, and then I'm looking at these posters on the buses.

I take the bus a lot now.

People read the posters and go, oh, there's a difference.

So I'm so excited that the city wants to move forward and have an educational campaign because I'm also a poll worker and I'm a coordinator and I get conflicting information on how to deal with pets.

Some of the instructors say if someone wants to walk in with a parrot on their shoulder, don't say anything.

Others understand the difference between a service animal and a pet.

Codifying this and educating our population would make it much safer for people to have their service animals because often pets don't interact well with service animals.

And I just wanted to say how happy I was that this is moving forward and any way that Disabled in Action could support this, we're all in.

And thanks for your time.

Who walked into the pool with a parrot?

No, no, an instructor said that would be okay.

Okay, that's good to know.

And I've been in my polling place.

Two dogs had a fight, and a civilian, someone who didn't bring the dog, was knocked down.

And neither of those dogs was a service animal.

But our coordinator that day said, don't tell anyone not to come in.

Thanks for sharing that.

Yeah.

Thanks.